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Mike Monteiro reposted thisMike Monteiro reposted thisThe White House just proved why we need professional tech ethics and unions. Someone at the White House web team woke up, went to work, and built the new "Aliens" page, a compilation of HTML, JavaScript, and CSS meant to cause harm to marginalized and historically harmed groups. This is unprofessional. It's bad craft. And I am ashamed that someone in my profession created this abomination. The page is designed to invoke fears of space aliens, but actually provides "declassified" of "ILLEGALS who invaded our country under the cover of darkness." Professional ethics create a communal system of support and accountability among skilled workers: When a worker is told to do something unethical they can hold up their professional ethics as reason for refusing, knowing the community will provide support, and knowing every other worker will refuse for the same reason. If a worker breaks the professional ethics, the community holds them accountable, prevents further harm from occurring, ensures the wrongs are made right, and provides the worker with the support they need to not make the same error again. Design is political, code is political, tech is political because the work designers and developers and technologists do shape the future for all of us. We owe it to ourselves and our communities to do good work. Professional ethics helps us do just that. Professional unions help us do that. Worker solidarity helps us do that. Books to get us started: - "You Deserve a Tech Union" by Ethan Marcotte https://lnkd.in/gTzpT4sS - "Ruined by Design" by Mike Monteiro https://lnkd.in/gTZGqh-x - "Design for Real Life" by Eric Meyer and Sara Wachter-Boettcher https://dfrlbook.com/ -- Postscript: If you're a designer or tech worker being told to do something unethical and feeling like you have no option but to comply, send me a message and I'll do what I can to help you find better work for a better future.
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Mike Monteiro shared thisThis week’s newsletter is worth your time. We talk about forgetting and remembering and a little bit about revenge. Yes I’m keeping a list. Yes some of you are on it. https://lnkd.in/gTT7mzb9
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Mike Monteiro shared thisToday in the Era of Abundant Intelligence, it’s a bag of dicks, man:
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Mike Monteiro reposted thisMike Monteiro reposted thisI've been at NPR for six years, and for the last three, I worked as head of its (relatively new) climate desk. We were 10 people who did ambitious, prize-winning enterprise and broke news. We launched an annual network-wide Climate Solutions Week that set the standard for cooperation with member stations and that gave audiences a sense of agency and inspiration amid the planetary gloom. We built a reporting collaborative of more than 50 member stations which covered climate at the local level and became tightly knit in the process. We broke down silos within NPR and helped our colleagues at shows, podcasts and desks understand climate change in their contexts. It was a grand run. Today, I was laid off by NPR. The climate desk no longer exists separately but has been folded into the National Desk. I have rarely been as inspired or happy as I was working with the nine other journalists on NPR's Climate Desk, and I feel so very lucky to have helped you--and learned from you. I'm finding my way forward, because as crushing as journalism can be, it has often given me purpose, joy and friendship. Our desk was a testament to that.
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Mike Monteiro reposted thisMike Monteiro reposted thisI've spent years interviewing data workers who are the lifeblood of the AI industry in places like Kenya, Colombia, and the Philippines. Now, according to LinkedIn, it's the fourth fastest growing job in the US. AI is coming for your job and not in the way you think. My latest investigation with Samuel Black for More Perfect Union looks at Silicon Valley's push to Uber-ize all knowledge work. https://lnkd.in/gMWmjuFAI Tracked Down the Hidden Workers Secretly Powering ChatGPTI Tracked Down the Hidden Workers Secretly Powering ChatGPT
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Mike Monteiro reposted thisMike Monteiro reposted thisAll of us who claim to care about marginalized people and communities, we should be booing AI the loudest. The demons forcing this tech on us are making everything worse, especially for disadvantaged people. Unless you are curing diseases or solving climate change or solving some other massive problem threatening all of us, using AI is patently inhumane. If you choose to use it anyway, you are choosing something that is hurting everyone and the meekest and least advantaged among us are being hurt the worst. There are so many reasons this is true…it is eliminating entry level jobs; the industry is plopping data centers in economically depressed communities that lack the political power to stop them; AI is ensconsing today’s wealthy elites in their position and eliminating pathways to get to that level; it is annihilating the jobs of low wage artists, writers and musicians; it is gobbling resources desperately needed by communities affected by war and climate change…I could go on. But the most awful thing in my opinion is that AI only values people for their ability to offer efficient, cheap labor. AI’s evangelists deny the value of human purpose. How cynical do you have to be to think there is anything positive about this?
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Mike Monteiro reposted thisMike Monteiro reposted thisSo … lemme get this straight. Companies left and right have been laying people off under the guise of investing in AI. Cuz, ya know, their CEO buddies did it and darn it! We wanna do it too!!! “Joey got an AI agent, why can’t I?!?!” But now … the tokens to run the agents are starting to exceed the cost of the humans. And when the money runs out, the AI just … stops. No negotiation, no gaslighting. No way to convince them that we’re a family cuz it has no personal emotional stake in the success of the company. Just fully stops doing its job until you pump another virtual quarter into the machine. And on top of that, in order for it to do its job AT ALL, you have to give it EVERYTHING. Every contract. Every memo. Every framework. Every piece of proprietary information it could possibly need, in full, to do its job. No clever work around or redacted documentation. And again … it’s a machine. It has no loyalty to you, real or imagined. It has a directive and a goal, and doesn’t consider the human nuance and intricacies of not using your own information against YOU in order to hit ITS directive. You traded human beings with tact, thought, nuance, emotional intelligence, and dedication to a purely transactional mercenary who will continually increase its price tag and hold your company’s productivity ransom until it’s paid. What’s that old saying … when the chickens come home to roost?
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